Week 6 of Cedo 550

This week concluded a very interesting class.  I have to say I most, out of everything we did,  enjoyed teaching an online course.  I feel confident that I could do this if I wanted to change what I am doing now.  It is a lot of work, but I think it would be fun and engaging as well.  As for this week in class, I really enjoyed the video called "Shift Happens".  It is a true wake up call as to where are country and children are at this point of time and it shows the importance of being technologically knowledgeable in the 21st century.

Week 5 of Cedo 550

This week was a fun week in Online Facilitation.  I was able to teach my 15 minute lesson on "Qualities of a Successful Online Student."  I felt I did much better than I thought I would do.  I asked many good questions and got my class to share some very good points.  I planned it as an interesting class and got a good grade on it. I think it gave me some very good experience for if I ever teach online in the future.

We also discussed social networking this week.  Overall my feeling of social networking is very positive.  I am part of an online community every day and have been for many years.  I  have been on Facebook since 2007 and really enjoy the opportunities I have to share my personal information and look into what is happening in other people's lives.  As a member of this Stritch Cohort, I also feel I have been in an online community that facilitates learning and sharing of knowledge.  I am very happy with my experiences so far.  


We also investigated the positives and negatives of working on a project collaboratively.  I feel a positive is the ability to bring many ideas together.  When you are only working by yourself, you are limited by your own experiences and ideas.  Have a group to work on a project together really opens up doors and makes your project the best it can be.  On the other hand, the greatest challenge of working collaboratively are those instances when team members do not work together well or there are personality conflicts.  Time is wasted because the members cannot come to a consensus and the product is not developed to the fullest extent.  


This week was a very interesting and useful week, and I continue to enjoy this online facilitation class.  

Week 4 of Cedo 550

This week we have focused on student centered instruction and differentiation of assignments.  Up until this school year, my teaching was very teacher centered.  I did a lot of lecturing and sharing of notes.  After going through Stritch, however, I have picked up a lot of strategies and have been changing the way I have been teaching to a more student centered approach.  I am putting most of my time into switching from teacher centered to student center learning in my Civics class.  The students are given a scenario and are expected to investigate the information, instead of me sharing every little bit of information with the students.  We still hold discussions, with me as the facilitator, but after the students have investigated the information asked of them.  I have also helped my team teacher in Life Science do teaching in this way as well. 

We were instructed to make an authentic assessment for our newly differentiated lesson.  I found that rubrics  really rate what the student is learning.  This works very well with the assignments I give in Civics class. I can honestly show where the student is based on what is expected of the student and what type of input the student put into his/her assignment.   I like the rubric I made because I can accurately see where they did well and were they were lacking.  It also shows them that I am stressing that they learn the content.  I do grade on spelling and grammar, but for many of my students this is a very difficult thing for them to master and I think it is a good thing for me to show them that their content is worth more than a few spelling errors. 

I really enjoyed learning about more differentiation strategies.  For example, for my civics assignment, I am now going to allow students to share their ideas in pictures and video rather than just text.  This small thing can help many students who tend not to be very skilled in writing.

This week has been very informational and I am looking forward to Tuesday when I can present my class discussion on qualities of a successful online student. 

Week 3 of Cedo 550

For the second half of this class, I will be acting as a Facilitator/Teacher. We were asked what challenges we see we will have as an online teacher.   I have not been an online teacher to this point.  However, I think a huge challenge will be to read all of the postings and assignments the students submit.  As I have been working as an online student, I have submitted a lot of ideas in each of my classes.  I can only imagine what it is like for the instructor to go through all of the comments.  I would want to designate a large amount of time in order to give quality feedback to my students.  

During class we were discussing facilitating asynchronous and synchronous discussions.  When posting an asynchronous discussion, I want to make sure that the questions that I post are clear and concise and my students will understand what is exactly expected of them to share.  As for the synchronous discussions I will be facilitating in the future, I think that the questions I ask as well as my ability to quickly react to anything that is brought up will be a challenge when I first do this.  As with anything, I belive I will get better at it as I do it more.  However, the first time doing this will probably be harder than I anticipate. We were given the option of what topic we would like to teach in our synchronous discussion.  I picked "The qualities of a successful online student" because it fits very well into what my class and I have been doing the past year.  I think it is a topic that will generate a lot of good discussion and opinions. I am looking forward to holding my first online teaching experience.  I am nervous, but I think this will be a great opportunity to practice and see if teaching online is something I would like to do in the future.

Week 2 of Cedo 550

This week, I got the opportunity to see what it feels like to be the facilitator and reporter of an online class.  It was intense yet enjoyable to take the role as the teacher in the online class setting.  I learned that you have to be on your feet and know how to direct the class and keep them interested.  I also discovered the importance of asking open ended questions that can get a dialague going. 

As a class, we also looked into some of the facilitation skills that are necessary to carry out a successful class.  I will make sure that I include as many students as possible in a web conference.  It is important to get various viewpoints shared and it helps the class open up when you have many opinions to work off of. 

Another important point to remember is the vvalue of a proper initial contact.  When starting an online class, I will always make an email invitation that is clear, precise, and provides a warm welcome to the class. 

Overall, this week seemed to be of real value to me.  I'm not sure if I will every teach an online class, but the tools provided the past week have helped me feel I could do it if it is something I do end up doing during my career. 

Week 1 of CeDO 550

This week I started a new course called Online Faciliation.  During this course I will be learning about instruction classes online.  I am excited about this opportunity because it will give me yet more tools that I can use after I am done with this program.  The first activity we did this week was too look at the positives and negatives of online education through the eyes of parents, teachers and students.  There is a lot to take into consideration for each of these groups of people.  Cost and quality of instruction are very important to parents.  Students are looking for flexibility in their schedules, but also looking for classes that are interesting and interactive.  Teachers tend to spend a lot of their day working as an online instructor, but they can do it with a flexibility that they do not have when teaching in a typical brick and mortar building.

We also looked at online tools that can be used with our students.  There really are a countless amount of activities available for use, but I found that you need to study them closely and see if they fit well with what you are trying to do in your class.  It does take time to figure out what activities should be used and when you will use them.

Overall, I enjoyed this first week of class and felt I gained some useful tools that I could use in my current classes I teach as well as some tools that may benefit me in the future.

Week 6 of Cedo 535

The item that I have decided to use fully in my professional life is a class wiki.  I am going on my 3rd week of using this now, and it is working very well.  The students can easily access this and enjoy having a centralized place were they can see what we have been doing in class and have the opportunity to edit any information they feel needs to be changed.  Since I have already started to incorporate this in my classroom, it is very easy to measure how well it is working for me.  I can look at all of the edits made by the students and figure out how much participation the students are having within the wiki.  I feel that this experiment will turn into something I use as a full time tool not just in my current Civics class, but in other classes I teach in the future.  It really does make teaching easier and learning for the students a more interactive task.